I see alot of people recommending to invest in index funds instead of individual stocks unless you're willing to spend an enormous amount of time researching each stock, reading the news, doing stock analysis, etc. Plus, apparently it can lead to alot of stress and worry, whereas if you just put your money in index funds, you can just let it sit and not worry about it. Moreover, the time spent on stocks could be used for other things like creating your own blog. I was also thinking of maybe starting my own blog that would be personal finance/FIRE-related

I currently have about $150K in index funds and want to get better returns. I don't think RE is for me because I don't want to be tied to one location, deal with potentially shitty tenants, etc. If researching stocks is just as time-consuming as RE investing, I think I would prefer stocks. Not sure about crytocurrencies and bitcoin though

Has anyone here actually beaten the stock market? If so, was it by a significant amount that it was worth spending the time and effort into it? How much time did you spend learning about it? Do you think you would've been better off using that time for other things like cryptocurrency investing, starting your own blog, etc?